I was in Harrogate for a few days years ago with my soon to be wife and saw this in a secondhand bookshop. For some reason I hesitated to buy it and when I went back the next day, it was gone. Little did I know, until that Christmas, that my wife-to-be had sneaked back and bought it for me (she knows me so well).

It seems like an appropriate header for this...

Hopefully, I'll be having too good a time over the Christmas holiday to blog, so in my absence here's a list of my favourite posts from the Ace Jet 2006 Archives (in no particular order):

Friday again. Only this one is the last one of 2006 probably. Next week I certainly should be having far too much fun to blog.

David sent me these Premium Bonds from the seventies. Only the photos, so I'm not going to win anything with them. Actually, neither did he.

Susan sent me these, about which she says, "as I pulled out a semi-ancient cookie press that my mother passed on to me to make my Christmas cookies, I was struck by the logo on the crumbling box in which the press was originally sold...The kitchen gadget is called the "Mirro Cooky and Pastry Press." I also love the layout of the recipe booklet that was included with the press".

Derek in Toronto sent me these brilliant letters, having taken pity on me after my "sniff" and "sob" last Friday. He explains the letters: "The cartoon lettering was on a construction hoarding in Chicago in the fall. It was an art installation, though I didn't of course make note of the artist, title, or point – just took photos of the letters I liked. (The 'F' is admittedly not great, but the toast is just so enthusiastic!)".

(Derek, don't look at the file names for your letter because I got you momentarily mixed up with David and named them incorrectly, which is very rude. Of course, you'll now go and check because I've pointed out my error. I, at least, feel better for being up front about it).

If anyone else would like to contribute, try using Email Me in my About thing. If that doesn't work leave a comment and I'll give you alternative route.

It's a brilliantly simple idea (nice), letterpress printed (fantastic) and he typed the envelope and note on an old typewritter (bloody brilliant!).

Now I love old typewriters for the same reason I love letterpress, rubber stamps and lino cut: the results are inherantly flawed and that gives them soul. In these days of Mac "perfection", beautiful imperfections should be cherished, celebrated, encouraged.

Even Matt's envelopes are lovely, off-the-shelf though they may be: off-white uncoated paper, printed inside with a repetitive pattern to help keep the content private. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not harking back to "better days". What I mean is that these things; the typewriter, the envelope, the letterpress; have humanist, tactile, craft qualities that are so often lost in our need to be fast, convenient and efficient.

Amongst my many weaknesses is one for traditional typographic ornamentation like you can see here. We do quite a lot of work for artisan food producers (creamerys, bakers, smokers, preservers) where traditional values are an essential part of what they're about. That's great because it's given me opportunities to join these two things up.

I'd be surprised if you haven't heard about this yet, but if you haven't signed up for updates, there's some new clips here. Something from Speikermann, Wim Crouwel, Brody and Poyner, and Experimental Jetset.

This week's slot is all from me. Mainly due to no other contributions (sniff, sob). Still, don't matter; got lot's of stuff stashed away. Although all this is from, yes you guessed it, our big day out...

OK, if you're a Londoner, you see things like this every day but I haven't been in London for a couple of years now. Actually, even if I lived there I'd still love this kind of thing, in all it's decrepit glory.

Passed the Metropolitan Workshop on the way to SOS and they have this really nice advent calendar in their window at the moment. Don't know much about them, but it looks like they do really interesting things.

"No Admittance" is from Tower Bridge and lastly, I've included the sign above Quinto's door for old times sake. Sometimes it's brilliant (it's where I found these). At the moment it's rubbish.

If anyone else would like to contribute, try using Email Me in my About thing. If that doesn't work leave a comment and I'll give you alternative route.

To polish off Fletcher Week, here's his cover for Wallpaper, one of his last comissions. You may have seen this on the Creative Review Blog a couple of weeks ago (finger on the pulse then!). It's a particularly interesting cover because they left off the mast heading as a kind of tribute to Fletcher (e-cr explains it). Someone commented that it wouldn't make the news stands, presumably because of this, so it was only available through the Wallpaper website or through boutique outlets like Magma.

So that was Fletcher Week. Any good? A bit too much Fletcher? Too much collage?

This is Fletcher's Wonderwall. He explains, in a bit of film, that he designed this for a school and how it could be used as a teaching aid; for counting (How many animals are there?) or for languages (What's the French for this thing here?) and how he imagined it being painted a new colour each year to refresh it.

These images are just details; the actual thing is about 4 x 2 metres. Looks pretty impressive in the flesh.